Salesforce’s AI agent platform, Agentforce, is seeing weaker-than-expected customer traction, according to a recent KeyBanc Capital Markets investment research note, which attributed the slowdown in part to the product itself, stating that “Agentforce, as a product, just isn’t there” yet, following customer checks and a CIO survey. “Our checks and customer conversations have not been strong, nor has the feedback been on Agentforce. What we can piece together in the disclosed numbers does not signal building momentum and, most recently, our CIO survey delivered another blow with Salesforce being a standout for the wrong reasons,” according to a Seeking Alpha that quoted a KeyBanc research note. “We attend more Salesforce partner and customer events than any other company in our coverage, and feedback from those customers has been consistent in two ways: 1) customers’ data is not in order to do meaningful AI work; and 2) Agentforce, as a product, just isn’t there,” Seeking Alpha reported, quoting the KeyBanc note. The KeyBanc note quoted by Seeking Alpha also pointed out that conversations with Salesforce “partners” indicate that Agentforce proof-of-concept deployments are only now starting to generate pipeline opportunities, while its CIO survey found more respondents expecting to deprioritize Salesforce within their IT budget than the other way around over the coming 12 months. The findings in the research note stand in contrast to Salesforce’s sustained push to position Agentforce as its flagship enterprise AI platform. Since introducing the offering nearly two years back, the company has expanded it with new foundation models, integrations, deployment options, and pricing initiatives, most recently introducing its Headless 360 strategy to make Agentforce available beyond conventional CRM workflows through a more flexible consumption model. Parts of that flexible consumption model and Agentforce pricing, which Salesforce is still evolving, have already come under scrutiny with industry analysts expressing concern that Headless 360’s monetization model could create budgeting headaches for CIOs by making AI spending less predictable and increasing pressure on IT leaders to demonstrate measurable business outcomes and return on investment before expanding deployments. Concerns over product maturity Those concerns around Agentforce’s evolving pricing model appear to be intersecting with the latest concerns about product maturity that KeyBanc analysts mention in their report. “Three pricing model changes in roughly 18 months make procurement committees nervous, and if the commercial model keeps shifting, buyers question whether the product has stabilized either,” said Bhupendra Chopra, chief revenue officer at IT consulting firm Kanerika. Salesforce’s latest consumption-based pricing model, Chopra pointed out, is a bigger concern: “It is harder to budget for than seat-based licensing. CIOs want a clearer line between spend and outcome. That line isn’t clear enough yet.” Greyhound Research Chief Analyst Sanchit Vir Gogia, too, said that the pricing model is a fundamental issue for enterprises. While Salesforce’s pricing model charges enterprises for AI activity, it leaves customers to determine whether those interactions ultimately translate into meaningful business outcomes, Gogia said. That, according to Gaurav Parab, principal research analyst at NelsonHall, is slowing adoption because enterprise leaders, such as CIOs, are under pressure to evaluate TCO and expected ROI. “Most enterprises first want confidence that AI deployments will generate measurable business outcomes before committing to broader rollouts,” he said. Data Cloud and data readiness remain as challenges Pricing, though, is just one piece of the equation. The discussion about Agentforce adoption, analysts said, cannot be separated from Salesforce’s broader product strategy, which positions Agentforce alongside Data Cloud as the foundation for enterprise AI deploy
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